News + Events

In exciting news, the Fiji and Solomon Islands Guideline Host apps have just been updated with new content!

Eight new guidelines have been added to the Fiji app including two recently published guidelines: Fiji Guidelines for Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease Diagnosis, Management and Prevention and Fiji Guidelines for Sore Throat and Skin Disease.

These guidelines are particularly important as rheumatic heart disease (RHD) affects 1% of the total Fijian population and is a leading cause of premature death. RHD is a preventable disease caused by repeated cases of acute rheumatic fever which results from an autoimmune response to group A streptococcal (GAS) infection. Therefore good management of sore throats and skin infections (which are commonly caused by GAS) is an important component of primary RHD prevention.

Dr Sainimere Boladuadua, technical advisor to the Fiji RHD program, was eager to see these guidelines added to the app, saying that ‘having clinical guidelines on this app means that they’ll reach the users they’re meant for … which in turn helps to ensure improvements in standard treatment and management of ARF and RHD across the country.’

The Solomon Islands app has also just been updated and now includes the latest Essential Medicines List and 10 additional guidelines, such as the WHO Pocket Book of Hospital Care for Children. This book is critical as it is the primary clinical guideline used in both inpatient and outpatient care of children in Solomon Islands’ hospitals.

For both countries, the addition of new guidelines across a variety of clinical topics means that these apps will be even more useful for health practitioners by giving them point of care access to the best treatment information for their patients.

Fiji National University (FNU) is the only institution which offers a degree level qualification in pharmacy in Fiji – and one of only two universities in the region – meaning that a large proportion of pharmacists in Pacific Island countries are FNU graduates.

Through the Developing Countries Program, TGL provides institutional access to eTG complete, the digital version of Therapeutic Guidelines, for all staff and students at FNU studying nursing, medicine and pharmacy.

The pharmacy lecturers have been particularly keen to promote this resource in their teaching. They use eTG complete not just as a reference but as an integral component of the clinical therapeutics course. Case-based learning is an important part of the curriculum, with students expected to source and apply information appropriately to real-world scenarios and eTG complete often contains the information they need. The teaching staff find that this style of learning improves students’ critical thinking and helps to prepare them for practice.

For further information on institutional access to eTG complete for universities in low or middle income countries, please email [email protected].

The response from health practitioners in both countries was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. In Solomon Islands, a survey of attendees at the weekly medical education session at the National Referral Hospital showed that most had already downloaded the app, all said that they found the app useful, and many were already using it every day.

At Lautoka hospital in Fiji not everyone had heard about the app, but a quick demonstration led to an additional 102 downloads of Fiji Guideline Host in the week following the visit!

Mieke also heard some great stories of the app in practice. A paediatrician in Solomon Islands explained that he was contacted by a nurse on an outer island about the best management for a child who had presented to the clinic. Rather than telling the nurse this information over a poor mobile connection, the doctor took screenshots of the relevant pages in the Solomon Islands Standard Treatment Guidelines for Children and sent them to the nurse via SMS. He was then able to implement this treatment for his patient – and subsequently downloaded the app too.

Acting National Referral Hospital (NRH) Medical Superintendent Dr Rooney Jagilly also thanked the Developing Countries Program for their support in developing the app:

“Having access to multiple local treatment guidelines on one’s phones anytime improves the efficiency and effectiveness by which a Solomon Islands health worker can treat their patients and thus improve the quality of care they provide.”

The NRH Paediatrics team using the Guideline Host app in Honiara, Solomon Islands